Strictly speaking, it's not "normal" to find animals stacked on top of one another. Nor is it "normal" to be an arm's length away from a star just by standing on a chair. But in Jay Jeon and Jonghwa Kim's perspective-based Global Game Jampuzzle, Projective, these bizarre images are perfectly normal. Well, sort of, since you're just making it look like the man's reaching for the star, but that's part of the challenge. While walking around a room loaded with floating silhouetted shapes, produce, and livestock using [WASD] and the mouse to look around, you've got to find the perfect spot to stand and view the shapes, so that what you see matches the target pattern in the corner. When you've identified the shapes, click on them to highlight your solution and line up your perspective once more.

Projective isn't an easy game, as there are a lot of red herring shapes in the room that might draw your attention, and there's only one spot to stand that gives the perfect solution. However, if you can figure out a system for sifting through the decoy shapes to find the real McCoys, this quickly becomes a very intriguing puzzle game. Beyond all that though, don't forget to take the time to just look around and soak in the environment. In one particular level, I uttered "whoa" out loud when studying the dynamic poses of some human shapes frozen mid-action. While a pretty minimalist game, Projective still makes the details pop in surprising ways. Take a walk around the five levels, and see what puzzles you can solve.

13 Comments

Wow. "Not easy" is the understatement of the decade. I love the idea, but it's a really tough game. I can't get past the "reaching for the star" level. I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible. (OK, I know it must be, but I can't figure it out.)

Something I didn't realize at first: even if the item is black in the picture frame, you still have to highlight it. That stumped me for a while.

Another thing I discovered that did help me (in the short progress I've made) is that you only have to have the proper perspective for a microsecond. In a couple of levels I got it accidentally while moving around trying to line everything up.

I guess it's part of the "atmosphere", but the incredibly short draw distance and the severely muted colors combine to make it really hard to even see what's in the room. This has the end effect of making an already difficult game even more difficult. I keep looking for a light switch I can turn on.

Also, the window loses focus every once in a while. Not really critical for a slow-paced game like this, but annoying.

Are you supposed to do anything besides highlight the objects once you find the right perspective? I am on the first level and have two white ball lined up so it looks exactly like the picture but nothing is happening.

I always appreciate games like this, because even if their execution has kinks, they at least TRIED to do something different. A lot of our highest rated games, and the ones I remember the most are short little games that were almost design prototypes, like Specter Spelunker Shrinks. There are three types of games that make up roughly 95% of titles submitted to this site, so I love seeing anything different.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree 100%. I do love the concept, and I do appreciate when someone tries to do something different. Proteus, for example, is one of my favorites. Unity is really expanding the horizons of what a game can be...it's like the early days of video games, when the "rules" of what a game had to be weren't really nailed down. Shooting a centipede in a field of mushrooms was in a cabinet next to a game where you tried to get a frog across the street.

So, yes, even if they're a little rough around the edges, they certainly deserve to be seen!

New browser platforms are advancing so fast! Around three or four years ago, someone showed us an HTML5 game that was just a soundless recreation of Asteroids, and it blew our minds because at the time it was the most complicated thing we'd seen in HTML5 thus far. Now HTML5 games are as complex and increasingly commonplace as Flash! I really wish I could go back in time to, say, 1995 and show eleven year old me what I'm playing for free on my computer right now and how it stacks up to the $60.00+ console games at the time. It would probably have blown my mind!

But I totally agree with you on the shortcomings on this game. :) I was just mostly reflecting out loud how neat it is to see people try new ideas, especially using different mediums.

In Perspective, you must stand at a certain place in the room to see the shape in the top left corner. The parts making up the shape must be highlighted by clicking on them.

I will refer to people that are not in the right pose to fit into the end result 'watchers'.

IMPORTANT: You may need to walk closer to the shapes to highlight them before returning to the right perspective.

I don't know how to put images in comments, so everything is described by words... not the best way, I know, but the only way I could do it.

Level 1: The Snowman

Stand at the corner of the room just anticlockwise from the ball sticking out of the ground, and face the corner opposite the aforementioned ball. You should see the snowman shape. Highlight the two balls.

Level 2: Newton Was Right

There are three people here. Two are in the 'lifting' pose, while one is a watcher. Highlight the 'lifting' man that is closest to the watcher. Facing the man you highlighted, move towards the back of the room. When you are standing to the left of the other 'lifting' man, an apple should be in the right position to complete the shape. Highlight the apple.

Level 3: Boxing Practice

This one is a little tricky to describe.
Again, there are three people, one of which is a watcher. Stand so that you can see all three people in a line; boxer, watcher, boxer. The two boxers should be closer to you than the watcher. Highlight the right boxer, the punching bag near you which is tilting towards him, and finally the small floating disc far away.

Level 4: Catch a Falling Star

Okay, this one looks hard, and it IS pretty hard. Lots of red herrings; only a few correct shapes. There are a few watchers here, two that seem to be in some kind of fight. Go to the table behind the poor guy getting kicked. Highlight the man there, and the chair which is next to the one he is standing on. Now move to the nearby table with a running watcher on top. Highlight the star above this table. The trickiest part is making the 'planet' underneath the starcatcher. Highlight the floating ball behind the runner, and align the highlighted shapes to create the picture.

Level 5: Animal Heaven

I can't really help much with this level; everywhere looks pretty much the same. Even a screenshot probably wouldn't help. All I can really say is that the animal stack is near the center of the room where the opposing animal 'mobs' collide. It's in the larger 'mob'. Start with the cow at the bottom, because if you choose the right cow, moving your mouse up should reveal the whole stack. Highlight them all. (Sorry, I realize this isn't very useful)

The first two levels were actually pretty hard - the first level had a couple of solutions that look pretty close, and the second level requires you to find a really exact match (with the apple stem pointing the right way). After that it gets easier because you have more things to line up, so it's more obvious when you're wrong. The level with the cows was as easy as looking through all the chickens until you found one that lines up with the other animals.

I was expecting, at any time, for them to start incorporating confusing shapes that could play the role of multiple objects depending on perspective. That could've been used to create more complicated levels, but it's actually nice that they didn't. The way the game is set up now, once you clear the first level and understand how the game works the difficulty is middling and the experience very relaxing.

It does have a surreal beauty to it, and the short length seems appropriate for the simple concept. Though, I wouldn't mind playing a few more levels of this.

I just can't get used to the Unity method of moving around, i.e. where moving on the x/y plane is a totally separate action from rotating your point of view. I don't know if there's a better way to do it, mind you, but I just find myself fighting with the interface to the point where I end up rage-quitting even the simplest Unity game.

About the level 6 in the walkthrough, I couldn't get the game to load on JiG, so I played the game on Kongregate (I know, I know). There was a level six there, where you had to make the projection of a man petting a deer near a Christmas tree.

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